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Why arent people using SVG for this sort of thing? Isnt that HTML5's vector graphics format? I supose if you're using icons w/ the express purpose of using th

by alpad 15y ago

Why arent people using SVG for this sort of thing? Isnt that HTML5's vector graphics format? I supose if you're using icons w/ the express purpose of using them with in-line text, then this would be Ideal... but just seems like a weird hack, when there is SVG available... The author of this website claims to simply be ignorant of SVG at the bottom? whats up with that? Why is using a font "hack" better than using the intended container for vector graphics? I guess web design has always sorta been about pushing the bounderies of browser quirks, but I kinda thought we were moving away from that. You would think the intended use of vector graphics would be designed to be just as good if not better than using a font to do the same thing.

blutonium 15y ago
IE8 and Android 2.4 don't support it for one, but it does seem SVG has never really had traction. I've heard SVG has poorer rendering performance in most browsers (I'm not actually sure if that's true), and that some folks feel it makes it easier for their assets to be copied.
- sopooneo 15y ago
  That has always confused me a bit. It seems that most of the stuff that people are doing with canvas requires writing a vector graphics layers on top of it anyway.
- justincormack 15y ago
  SVG is gaining traction, eg through use of d3.js. svgweb can work as an IE shim. Old Android is a problem, but on the other side Microsoft are doing a good job and pushing SVG in IE9+.
mexi1010 15y ago
I'm not all that great at webdesign but I couldn't seem to implement this in CSS. Any suggestions in doing something similar with SVG?
huffman 15y ago
The main advantages are listed on the page. Being able to apply CSS styles is the biggest one.
- gerrit 15y ago
  you can apply css to svg
hsmyers 15y ago
SVG would be wonderful if it were not for the lack of native support early on in browser land. That skips over the none trivial problem of what it takes to create a symbol/glyph in SVG. Not only do you have to be a competent typographer, but you also have to be a programmer (SVG is very Postscript like). Yet more barriers to widespread use. None of this is fatal, but like speed-bumps, it certainly slows things down. I'm in general more happy adopting a widely used Unicode font for the things that I need in this category. Your mileage may vary.
- wladimir 15y ago
  Why would you need to be a programmer to make a SVG symbol/glyph? All vector-drawing programs can export it these days. I think creating a font is more difficult. Having said that, fonts do have some properties that can be advantageous for black-and-white icons; for example, automatically coloring with the text color and style.
philippK 15y ago
There was an article posted here 1 day ago that explored to great lengths why SVG for scalable icons sounds good in theory - but does not work well in practice. And why icon fonts are the way to go for now. See here: http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2011/11/04/about-those-vector-icons.html http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2011/11/04/about-those-vector-... Key point: SVG icons don't actually scale that well because SVG lacks hinting.
- WiseWeasel 15y ago
  No, the point of that piece was not that icon fonts are the way to go. It was that one vector icon can't just be rendered at different resolutions without changing the level of detail, and most icon designers use vectors to render their large sizes, but often resort to manual bitmap pixel pushing at smaller sizes to get the look they want. The key point is that you need to design different vectors or bitmaps for different actual rendered sizes, with different levels of detail, and one design will never be suitable for all sizes.
mmatants 15y ago
Pixel hinting. The desired icons in this case are small ubiquitous monochrome glyphs. Text fonts and font renderers have already optimized that specific use-case tremendously - so why not plug into that.
- mbq 15y ago
  On the other hand implementing pixel hinting of some shape in a font is quite likely equally hard then writing a JS generator of optimized SVG. Yet rendering speed may be a problem.
masklinn 15y ago
> Why arent people using SVG for this sort of thing? Isnt that HTML5's vector graphics format? 1. SVG is slow, text layout engines (therefore fonts) are fast 2. SVG support is pretty terrible (not available on Android < 3, IE <= 8 and that's for support at all, inline-svg-in-HTML is even rarer and it's even easier to hit shitty implementation bugs), fonts are very well supported 3. I don't think you can use SVG in pure CSS, so you need markup, not so with fonts (theoretically you can use SVG as background, practically I'm sure it works half the time best) 4. You can't hint SVG, so it does not scale well from big to small resolutions 5. Mixing SVG and HTML text is absolutely awful, mixing text in an iconic font and actual text is much easier 6. Iconic fonts are trivially "sprited" (bundle all the icons in a single font file), this is more complex in SVG 7. Changing the color of an iconic font to match a new or alternative layout takes all of a single CSS property, likewise to change font (therefore the style of all the iconset) (this assumes the iconsets use the same characters as hooks for equivalent symbols). > You would think the intended use of vector graphics would be designed to be just as good if not better than using a font to do the same thing. You would, wouldn't you? But it turns out fonts are very, very good vector formats for (physical) rendering sizes.
- TylerE 15y ago
  Isn't the argument more that SVG sucks, rather than that there is anything fundamentally wrong with vector graphics?
  - masklinn 15y ago
    Absolutely (hence my responding to why SVG is not used for this), fonts are vector graphics after all.
  - XLcommerce 15y ago
    I don't think you've used svg before. It definitely does not suck.
    - TylerE 15y ago
      No, I defiantly have, and it does. For a standard 13 years in the making, the number of decent FULL FEATURED implementations is minuscule. Stuff that mostly works likes Inkscape tends to use it's own dialect and not fully support all the features.

by alpad 15y ago

blutonium 15y ago

IE8 and Android 2.4 don't support it for one, but it does seem SVG has never really had traction. I've heard SVG has poorer rendering performance in most browsers (I'm not actually sure if that's true), and that some folks feel it makes it easier for their assets to be copied.

sopooneo 15y ago
That has always confused me a bit. It seems that most of the stuff that people are doing with canvas requires writing a vector graphics layers on top of it anyway.
justincormack 15y ago
SVG is gaining traction, eg through use of d3.js. svgweb can work as an IE shim. Old Android is a problem, but on the other side Microsoft are doing a good job and pushing SVG in IE9+.

mexi1010 15y ago

I'm not all that great at webdesign but I couldn't seem to implement this in CSS. Any suggestions in doing something similar with SVG?

huffman 15y ago

The main advantages are listed on the page. Being able to apply CSS styles is the biggest one.

gerrit 15y ago
you can apply css to svg

hsmyers 15y ago

SVG would be wonderful if it were not for the lack of native support early on in browser land. That skips over the none trivial problem of what it takes to create a symbol/glyph in SVG. Not only do you have to be a competent typographer, but you also have to be a programmer (SVG is very Postscript like). Yet more barriers to widespread use. None of this is fatal, but like speed-bumps, it certainly slows things down. I'm in general more happy adopting a widely used Unicode font for the things that I need in this category. Your mileage may vary.

wladimir 15y ago
Why would you need to be a programmer to make a SVG symbol/glyph? All vector-drawing programs can export it these days. I think creating a font is more difficult. Having said that, fonts do have some properties that can be advantageous for black-and-white icons; for example, automatically coloring with the text color and style.

philippK 15y ago

There was an article posted here 1 day ago that explored to great lengths why SVG for scalable icons sounds good in theory - but does not work well in practice. And why icon fonts are the way to go for now. See here: http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2011/11/04/about-those-vector-icons.html http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2011/11/04/about-those-vector-... Key point: SVG icons don't actually scale that well because SVG lacks hinting.

WiseWeasel 15y ago
No, the point of that piece was not that icon fonts are the way to go. It was that one vector icon can't just be rendered at different resolutions without changing the level of detail, and most icon designers use vectors to render their large sizes, but often resort to manual bitmap pixel pushing at smaller sizes to get the look they want. The key point is that you need to design different vectors or bitmaps for different actual rendered sizes, with different levels of detail, and one design will never be suitable for all sizes.

mmatants 15y ago

Pixel hinting. The desired icons in this case are small ubiquitous monochrome glyphs. Text fonts and font renderers have already optimized that specific use-case tremendously - so why not plug into that.

mbq 15y ago
On the other hand implementing pixel hinting of some shape in a font is quite likely equally hard then writing a JS generator of optimized SVG. Yet rendering speed may be a problem.

masklinn 15y ago

> Why arent people using SVG for this sort of thing? Isnt that HTML5's vector graphics format? 1. SVG is slow, text layout engines (therefore fonts) are fast 2. SVG support is pretty terrible (not available on Android < 3, IE <= 8 and that's for support at all, inline-svg-in-HTML is even rarer and it's even easier to hit shitty implementation bugs), fonts are very well supported 3. I don't think you can use SVG in pure CSS, so you need markup, not so with fonts (theoretically you can use SVG as background, practically I'm sure it works half the time best) 4. You can't hint SVG, so it does not scale well from big to small resolutions 5. Mixing SVG and HTML text is absolutely awful, mixing text in an iconic font and actual text is much easier 6. Iconic fonts are trivially "sprited" (bundle all the icons in a single font file), this is more complex in SVG 7. Changing the color of an iconic font to match a new or alternative layout takes all of a single CSS property, likewise to change font (therefore the style of all the iconset) (this assumes the iconsets use the same characters as hooks for equivalent symbols). > You would think the intended use of vector graphics would be designed to be just as good if not better than using a font to do the same thing. You would, wouldn't you? But it turns out fonts are very, very good vector formats for (physical) rendering sizes.

TylerE 15y ago
Isn't the argument more that SVG sucks, rather than that there is anything fundamentally wrong with vector graphics?
- masklinn 15y ago
  Absolutely (hence my responding to why SVG is not used for this), fonts are vector graphics after all.
- XLcommerce 15y ago
  I don't think you've used svg before. It definitely does not suck.
  - TylerE 15y ago
    No, I defiantly have, and it does. For a standard 13 years in the making, the number of decent FULL FEATURED implementations is minuscule. Stuff that mostly works likes Inkscape tends to use it's own dialect and not fully support all the features.